Sunday, April 14, 2013

Sunday Confession: Wrath At A Fellow Teacher Edition

Bless me readers, for this morning I have committed the sin of wrath. I read these paragraphs:

A high school English teacher in New York state who had students pretend to be Jew-hating Nazis in a writing assignment has been placed on leave.

The teacher at Albany high school caused a storm of criticism after having students practice the art of persuasive writing by penning a letter to a fictitious Nazi government official arguing that "Jews are evil".

I had a moment of charity when I thought that this is a rookie teacher, but "[t]he district has not named the teacher, who was described as a veteran."

It was at that point that I uttered "how can anyone be so stupid and still breathe?" I may also have used a few words that are not safe for work, but I did not take the Lord's name in vain.

The goals of the assignment could have been met with a dozens of prompts that do not smack of antisemitism.

For the assignment, the teacher asked students to research Nazi
propaganda, then write a letter trying to convince an official of the
Third Reich "that Jews are evil and the source of our problems".

"Review
in your notebooks the definitions for logos, ethos, and pathos," the
teacher's assignment said. "Choose which argument style will be most
effective in making your point. Please remember, your life (here in Nazi
Germany in the30s) may depend on it!"

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

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